Monday, October 15, 2012

Modes

When the semester begins, (even before that, really) teacher mode kicks in. My focus is on teaching, setting up classes, preparing assignments, and the dreaded grading. I still write. I've been trying very hard to make sure that writer mode stays on no matter what else is going on, but publishing mode, the part of me that is trying to find an agent and get published, gets pushed way into the background. There are, after all, only so many hours in the day. Sorting through the web, looking through the Writer's Market, following agents on Twitter, ends up being a lot of work. And it's work that I can do, but when teaching comes, I have to shift focus.The only regret, and the thing I want to work on, is being able to switch modes more effortlessly. If I can figure out a way to go from teaching to publishing with less effort, I think I could fit at least a little of it into my semester.Even then, publishing mode ends up encompassing a lot of smaller modes, like teaching does. Queries, social media, conferences, and the like are all parts of that mode, but require their own separate skills. Writing the book is the easy part of becoming a writer. But then, getting a degree is the easy part to being a teacher.